Letters to the Editor, July 11

Tuesday

Jul 11, 2017 at 12:01 AM

Thanks for Feast help

The Ashland Lions Club wishes to thank the community and all those who helped us make the Feast of Will possible. As it coincides with the opening of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's outdoor Elizabethan Theatre, it has long been a mutual support for both organizations and our community as well.

The festival, the Music Coop and Paddington Station all help with ticket sales. Ashland Boy Scout Troop 112 sets up and takes down all the tables and chairs. The Ashland Garden Club provides dozens of lovely flower arrangements for the tables, which our guests are invited to take home. The bagpipers and Siskiyou Singers entertain and delight our guests while they get their food and eat it. These have been traditional services for many years.

This year, Food 4 Less and Elmo's Cafe at SOU provided the food products. The Ashland Kiwanians served as extra hands, as did a number of others recruited by Lions, and they all performed generously.

All profits from the event go back into the community. The Lions Sight and Hearing Center provides help for those with vision and hearing problems, and Lions do eye screening for all county elementary schools. We also provide music scholarships for Ashland middle and high schools and a variety of services and donations for the Parks Department.

Thank you all for helping us do these things.

Robert M. Miller

Ashland

Supporting Long

I am writing in support of the appointment of Kamilah Long to the recently open position on the Ashland School District Board.

Long has a breadth of experience and expertise that can uniquely benefit the School Board and the community. She has been a college professor, high school teacher and a manager for capital campaigns at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. As a parent with a son at Ashland High School, she is well aware of the importance of the vision and goals in education and school environment that serve the needs of all students and give parents confidence in the quality of their children’s public school education.

Long is well-suited to provide important diversity to the school board and is skilled in assisting the district in achieving important goals of cultural competency for teachers, administration and students alike. She is also skilled in assessing board policies and addressing budgetary issues.

Kamilah Long would be an excellent asset to our schools and community. I heartily encourage her appointment to the Ashland School District Board.

Martin Towbin

Ashland

Another disastrous whim

We have been overwhelmed since January with the destructive whims coming from the minority-elected Twitterer-in-chief. Now it is becoming clear that, on top of dismantling funding for health care globally (1), withdrawing from our climate compact with 170 other nations (2), disabling all environmental protections for people and nature (3), and pouring tax breaks onto the super-rich (4), there is one more disastrous whim potentially more destructive to our country's future.

With this administration's chest-thumping "America First" policy against immigrants and our allies, we are strengthening Europe's alliance with Asia and making the USA potentially marginal and not so relevant in the global economy. Russia is not our friend, and the Chinese, Japanese and Europeans are smart, experienced and sophisticated and proceeding appropriately to make rational decisions for their own economic security and military safety.